Dear Dr Verwoerd – An Open Letter

Wynberg Old Boy, Dr HF Verwoerd, was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966. He has been immortalised in South African history as the ‘Architect of Apartheid’.

H.F. Vervoerd
'Architect of Apartheid'

I was in our school museum the other day and I read that next year, 2013, will be the 100th anniversary of your Grade 8 year at Wynberg. It made me think how much Wynberg as a suburb and Wynberg as a School - or as it was known in your day, Wynberg High School for Boys - has changed in the intervening century.

The suburb you lived in after the Anglo Boer War must have been very English – what with the military camp, St John’s Church dominating the hill, hundreds of little houses built for British officers over the years. I wonder if your father, Willem, built any of the houses we see in Wynberg today? You will be pleased to know that the Dutch Reformed Church where Willem was a Lay Preacher still stands and the current minister, Ds Nel, sends his son to our school.

I wonder when you were growing up if you met Meyer Levis, pushed out of Russia by the anti-Jewish pogroms, who was also living in Wynberg? His son, Stanley Lewis, later became Head Prefect of Wynberg and went on to found the Foschini Empire. His family bought a house in the same road as your Church – but that was after you left to go with the family up to Rhodesia. I have no doubt that you would have attended Wynberg with many other Jewish boys whose fathers ran successful businesses in the vicinity of the Main Road. In fact the school house I live in, Kaplan House (part of Silverhurst) was built by a successful Wynberg businessman, Isadore Hanau. It was restored in 2006 by Mendel Kaplan in gratitude for the generations of Kaplans (who also had to leave Russia) who had received education at this school. I notice from the records that there were a number of this Kaplan family in the admission registers of your day.

Martha,
Countess Stamford

You might even have come across the daughter of a former slave, Martha Solomons, who married an aristocratic Englishman - the Earl of Stamford. Now THAT must have caused a scandal in Wynberg society – not to mention the gentry in England! After she inherited his wealth, she is reputed to have been responsible for building over 80 houses and buildings in the Wynberg area – including the Sending Kerk below your father’s church. Who knows? The odds are really good that your father, as a prominent building contractor in this area, might even have been employed by her.

John, Old Boy
& heir to
Earl Stamford

As a continual reminder of her considerable contribution to the suburb of Wynberg, the road leading off near the front gates of our school is called Stamford Road.

You are unlikely to have known her son, John, though. He also went to Wynberg Boys’ High School – but he was a few years ahead of you. He then went on to start a career in England and his descendants are living in New Zealand today.

I was really interested to see that you had outstanding results in Grade 8 in 1913 coming second to the only other Afrikaans boy in the class – I.D.du Plessis who became very well-known later as an Afrikaans poet and writer. That is a singular feat for two Afrikaans boys to head up the grade in an English speaking school. I would like to think that Wynberg laid the foundations for your later matric result at Brandfort where you passed with distinction and came top of the Free State matric lists – and fifth in South Africa.

What a privileged education you had at Wynberg in that you would have been able to discuss and bounce ideas off boys from different colours, languages and religions. Unfortunately, I was at Prep School while you were Prime Minister and did not have that privilege in that my classmates were all white and English speaking.

I really hope that it was not at Wynberg where you developed your antipathy to all things English. I remember a story I once heard where someone asked you in 1965 if you had heard that the English were not doing too well during the South African cricket tour of England. Your reported response was (apparently): ‘Wie se Engelse? Ons’n of hulles’n?’

Somewhere along the line you developed a conviction that Afrikaners had a unique identity and could only be saved from dilution by imposing strict limits on contacts with other race groups and other languages. It was that same year (1965) where you made that aptly named ‘Loskop Dam’ speech forbidding New Zealand from including Maoris in their All Black team which was due to tour South Africa. ‘National survival,’ you said, ’was more important than sport.’

You wouldn’t be able to say that to any Wynberg boy today. None of them care for a moment where a boy comes from, where he worships, what the colour of his skin is – they are just mates on the field trying to outplay the opposition. They seem to realise intuitively that everyone brings different strengths and that the school is stronger because of variety and differences.

Wynberg Boys' High 8 - 7 SACS
August 2012 

I wish you could have heard the school singing ‘Men of Wynberg’ at our sport fixtures this season or chanting ‘Supera Moras’ (Never Give Up) while our rugby team defended their try line for twenty minutes in the pouring rain in a recent game against SACS.

I wish you could have seen the first cricket team mob Jason Smith when he took five wickets in his last ever game for Wynberg last week. His colour was not even a consideration when he gained a deserved selection for the SA Schools Hockey side earlier in the year. He capped off a fine school career by winning ‘Sportsman of the Year’.

Jason Smith & his father

All of these sportsmen were wearing the navy blue and white hoops of your old school.

I wish you could have experienced the emotion when the dual leads in our school production this year ‘How to Succeed in Business without really Trying’ sang Brotherhood of Man. Mark Timlin and Stefan Botha are the best of friends – and it showed on stage. Over a hundred boys and girls from the Wynberg schools participated in this ambitious and successful production.

Mark Timlin & Stefan Botha alternated the role of  'Finch' in
Wynberg's 2012 production of
'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'

Six years ago, I sat at the cricket pavilion at the Jacques Kallis Oval watching your Great-Grandson play cricket for a Wynberg Invitation XI against the Blue Leopards – a team from Hout Bay. Wian, lives with his mother in Ireland but had come out to spend a term at your old school. On the field of play were two teams representing all shades of South African life battling it out for sporting supremacy with the only contest being between bat and ball.

I looked beyond the field. Above the trees was the spire of your father’s old church just peeking over the branches watching the latest Verwoerd doing what ordinary boys do – playing with his mates. You once said (in a broadcast to the nation on 3 September 1958) that ‘The policy of separate development is designed for happiness, security and stability … for the Bantu as well as the Whites.’

Personally, I think that our long-term ‘happiness, security and stability’ is better protected by schools like Wynberg (and hundreds of others) who are working towards assuring South Africans of a more encouraging and favourable future. I often wonder if the history of South Africa would have taken a different turn if you had been at Wynberg a little longer ...

Jacques Kallis at The Oval

It was interesting that the match involving your Great-Grandson was on the Jacques Kallis Oval. Jacques was sent to Wynberg by his Afrikaans speaking father and he matriculated in 1993 – exactly eighty years after your one and only year at this school. Since then he has become undoubtedly the world’s greatest all-round cricketer idolised by millions of South Africans – of all colours.

Isn’t that just how it should be?

Regards

Keith Richardson

Headmaster

Wynberg Boys’ High School

KCR: My thanks as always to the photo contributors